@Aalia 4 December 2022

“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.” They who can no longer unlearn have lost the power to learn is so true, many years ago the word tenacity was used to describe me. I looked up the word in the dictionary when someone wrote: “Her greatest achievement in the field of education has been her ability (and tenacity) in seeing three daughters with different temperaments and skills, successfully through their school years.” It takes tenacity to go on with your life when everyone else is walking on a different path to you. It takes tenacity to continue walking on this lonely path alone, walk on an uncharted road without a road map, something that many will never attempt to do. Strong tenacious women are feared by weak man, and other women feel threatened and intimidated by the courage that many survivors find each day that keeps them going on. Over the years I’ve had people tell me that I am too strong-minded, too this, too that, too proud, I still don’t understand even at my age why being proud of what you yourself can do has become a dirty word. Many have actually said that I am stubborn because I was born in May, and my birth sign is Taurus. I was also born the year of the Rat, in 1948, so yes, I am stubborn and a survivor. A person who is regarded as stubborn is actually tenacious, courageous and brave when faced with hardships and misfortune, a person who is a survivor has overcome many obstacles, by being tenacious. When I first read this scripture I am glad to be who I am. "I will make you like a threshing-board, with spikes that are new and sharp. You will thresh mountains and destroy them; hills will crumble into dust. (Isaiah 41: 15) And you can call it stubbornness, but I like my own definition of stubbornness in my survival, it is the persistence of purpose in doing something despite the difficulty along the way. Persistence illustrates a person’s stubbornness, and single-mindedness, to the persistency of purpose. Do not let what you cannot do today interfere with what you can do tomorrow. It’s during our most difficult times and in our darkest moments as we journey on that we need to believe in tomorrow.